Liveblogging: The future of learning has 2 letters- an A and an I

We are all in the room because of Donald Clark :). With clear opinions on almost everything.

Is there another paradigm coming up in elearning?We don’t remember things linearly in our brains. The elearning in linear and flat. Some of it does the job but we can do it better. The new paradigms is callen AI. Artificial intelligence which is NOT about copying the brain. It is about teaching – training- learning.

Algorithms are not new- what is new then?

We have had algorithms starting with Aristoteles. What is new and what is important for us?

Level 1 – tech. Every time we press a button there is artificial intelligence behind. If you Google, there is AI behind it. What do Google Cisco Apple and Facebook in common? They are spending an enormous amount of money on AI. In the Todai robot project the AI agent passed the university exam with the highest mark. It had a reinforcement look to learn math. If it can do that what does this mean for the future? The AI is more diagnostic than a teacher, can therefore give the student the right level of content/ feedback. Another example Go Google beat humans with Go (the game). What’s the lesson- The AI can learn to play itself. This matters because… AI moves from theory to practice and the impact will be enormous.

Level 2 – Assistive. Imagine a world where you can create elearning by pressing a button using AI.. Wildfire can use any text, powerpoint or video and transform it into elearning. It creates automatic wikipedia links to relevant terms. This can decrease the cost of elearning production and there will be no delay and maintenance costs. It also has implications for assessment using facial recognition. It also knows who you are from your fingertyping prints. Automatic essay marking will be a huge relief for teachers.

Level 3- Analytics. Learning styles don’t exists. The same for Myer-Briggs personalities. Analytics do exist. With analytics you can feed the system and with that you can make for instance an excel course tailor-made.

Level 4- Hybrid. Educate everyone uniquely. Everyone is unique. This doesn’t mean grabbing test score, but knowing the learning. AI is grabbing al this including the emotional state. This allows for a holistic approach. Adaptive sets you free from the A to Z linear learning program. Adaptive will develop a unique path. The dropout rate in university in Britain is 16%

Level 5- Autonomy. What is the best piece of elearning? Compliance training never worked. It is ticking the boxes and this has to stop. Scenario-based training can become more realistic with AI, using data analysis to find out what the problems really are. Donald has never seen anybody on the train doing elearning on his mobile, so mobile is not about putting your courses on a mobile.

What are the consequences?

Donald wraps up with the 10 things algorithms can do which teachers can’t, like ignore gender, get tired, personalize learning. Many jobs will become obsolete.

My conclusion: it is striking how many speakers make the point about artificial intelligence. I am curious to see what impact that will have from a social learning point of view, similarly as Donald has explored from a education/ teachers point of view.